Camille Brown of Gentle Mind is Here to Stay

The entertainment industry has always been trying to find people that possess that elusive X factor. There have been countless television reality shows about it. The one thing that everyone forgets, though, is that you can’t manufacture star power. It’s a combination of many things that are honestly pretty intangible. A wonderful example of this is local singer/songwriter Camille Brown. Camille and her band Gentle Mind haven’t been performing for very long in Vancouver but they are already turning heads. Originally from Montreal, Camille kept her interest in becoming a musician as a secret to her family or friends. “I’ve always been very like ‘look at me’,” Brown says, chuckling. “I love attention but it was rarely from performing.” Hearing her say this, after already hearing her amazing, honey-dipped voice, is so surprising. “I never took vocal lessons or anything growing up,” she laughs.

After moving to Vancouver a couple of years ago to attend a creative writing program at UBC, Brown met her Gentle Mind bandmates while attending an extra curricular event on campus that places the attendees together to form a one-off band for the night. “I was super lucky to meet the band the way that I did, everything about it just came together very naturally.” Gentle Mind's skills as musicians definitely belie their ages. The band blends a perfect dynamic of R&B and indie pop that can captivate a room, alternating the crowd between a tender sway to an all out dance party.

Lately, with school on hiatus and some of the band’s members away for the summer, Brown has been doing some co-writing with other artists. “I’ve never really co-wrote with anyone that wasn’t in the band before, so this is a real new and cool experience,” she says. “It’s really opened up the possibilities of what I can do genre-wise or what the definition of Gentle Mind can be.” A recent co-writing session with Louise Burns really turned Brown on to this idea. “We wrote a song that I would consider a real pop song. It was something that listening back to it could totally be on the radio. I don’t feel I’ve written something like that before and I found it super exciting.”

What is super exciting is to see where Brown and her band will go next. Her combination of confidence and talent should go a long way in establishing her as one of the new major talents in the city of Vancouver. “Being an artist and a musician is something that I now know I really want to do with my life. That is going to make me happy.” With her drive and determination, plus that X factor she brings to her work, having a plethora of new Gentle Mind songs is also something that will continue to make us all pretty happy.

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